Obesity surgery yields payoff

Procedure can lengthen life, study finds USA TODAY     Severely obese people who have weight-loss surgery are less likely to die from heart disease, diabetes and cancer within seven to 10 years of the procedure than those who don't have the operation, according to two studies in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers at the University of Utah School of Medicine examined data on about 10,000 patients who had gastric bypass surgery, which creates a much smaller stomach, and compared their mortality rates to almost 10,000 severely obese patients who had not had surgery. During the follow-up period, which averaged seven years, the surgery patients had a slightly higher risk of death from non-disease causes, such as accidents and suicides, but were much less likely to die from heart disease, cancer or diabetes than the control group. Overall, the scientists calculate that death rate declines by 136 per 10,000 operations. "This certainly demonstrates that those who have the surgery have improved mortality overall," said lead researcher Ted Adams. In the second study, scientists in Sweden compared data on 2,010 obese people who had bariatric surgery with 2,037 heavy people *****ceived a range of weight-loss help. The people who had surgeries lost and kept off a significant amount of weight; those in the control group didn't. In an average follow-up of 10.9 years after surgery, there were 101 deaths in the surgery group compared with 129 in the control group. Insurance companies vary widely in their coverage of gastric bypass or gastric banding, in which a band is used to create a very small pouch at the top of the stomach. Under certain conditions, Medicare covers both surgeries.